Monthly Archives: December 2011

Plans for Base CMS

Posted by Jacob Santos on December 27, 2011 Comments Off

I’ve decided on using Zend Framework version 2. It isn’t yet released, but that shouldn’t be a problem. It also has many of the components I was planning on writing myself in such a way that I was planning on coding. This saves a great deal of time and heartache as I feel the framework is above and beyond my requirements.

My main goal at this point is simply to start programming. If I can overcome that part, then I think January should be a good month to have a lot of work done.

The main part of the base application is to have an administration panel, probably modeled in some part on WordPress administration, a user management, and the main web site. There will be a module based system, but the goal isn’t to have a true CMS where modules would extend the mostly empty application. The goal is to have a base application which can be extended into other applications. The modules would then add additional functionality based around the ‘theme’ of the base application.

I plan on creating two applications extending the base application: Directory and Gaming Engine. I plan on developing this projects concurrently as much as possible. Well, I plan on doing modular coding regardless, so my guess is that if I do this correctly, I should be able to take one piece meant for one application and use it in another application.

The goal of the gaming engine is to build something similar to Minecraft. The voxel engine of Minecraft proves that it is a viable visual 3D platform. The games will not be clones of Minecraft. Actually, one game will be very similar to Sim Farm, Sim City, Stronghold and other such games. I loath to go into more detail until I work out the base game engine and have the visual components working. The final product may end up completely different depending on what I eventually find that I can achieve in a relatively short amount of time.

Regardless, one game will not have any real threat and is primarily market and simulation based. I’ve been wanting to create this game and Minecraft has given me the inspiration on how I can build the visual parts. It has been frustrating in the past, since I didn’t know how to work the game out visual within my ability or lack thereof.

The other game, Mecha Asylum, will provided I am able to create the voxel game engine, be what I intended for the original game in 2004. Similar to the farming simulation, there will be threats and will have enemies.

Having both games very similar in design and a voxel engine to display 3D designs, the development should go fairly quickly. I also want to have a way to create 3D models in game, but most of the ones I create will probably be by code.

The directory will be completely designed around social networks: Google+ and Facebook. Google+ is constantly adding features and the same applies to Facebook. The goal is to provide a portal and then simply use the social networks to store certain data. Authentication and Authorization will be based on Google and, or Facebook sign in. I will eventually to have create a custom authentication based on user and password, but none of the current projects require it. The amount of people who don’t have a Google or Facebook account are fairly small and the numbers are constantly raising. I will eventually add Openid and other third-party authentication, but I figure the big two will work just fine, since well most sites are implementing them too.

I’m going to develop the Directory without ad support in the first version. With the theme support with base application, it shouldn’t be that difficult to add a third-party ad system to the application. Also, whatever solution I create probably won’t be as full-featured as Google, Microsoft or another ad site. Regardless, I think one of the first implementations will be to actually support some of the more popular ad sites.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself. This week, I wish to finish a basic administration panel, an working authentication sign in process using Google and Facebook. A basic profile that pulls from either Google+ and, or Facebook with additional content. That is it. If I can get this working, then I should have motivation to continue next week and start working full time on both the game engine and directory applications, while moving some code back into the base application.

That reminds me, as I develop the game engine code base, I plan on blogging about the process. Some of my most popular posts are the game development posts and it would be interesting to continue the series that I dropped so long ago.

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